1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus that produces a color filter used for optical devices, such as a liquid crystal device, and the like. The present invention also relates to a method and apparatus to manufacture a liquid crystal device having a color filter. The present invention further relates to a method and apparatus to manufacture an EL device that displays by using an EL luminescent layer. The present invention further relates to a method of discharging a material to an object, and an apparatus that controls a head. The present invention further relates to an electronic apparatus having a liquid crystal device or an EL device manufactured by the above-described method.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, display devices, such as a liquid crystal device, an EL device, and the like have been widely used as display sections of electronic apparatuses, such as cell phones, portable computers, etc. Also, in recent years, full-color displays using a display device have been increasingly made. A full-color display of a liquid crystal device is made by, for example, transmitting light, which is modulated by a liquid crystal layer, through a color filter. The color filter includes dot-shaped color filter elements of R (red), G (green) and B (blue), which are formed in a predetermined arrangement such as a stripe, delta, or mosaic arrangement on the surface of a substrate of glass, plastic, or the like.
In a full-color display of an EL device, dot-shaped EL luminescent layers of R (red), G (green) and B (blue) colors are provided in a predetermined arrangement on electrodes, which are formed in any desired arrangement, for example, a stripe, delta, or mosaic arrangement, on the surface of a substrate made of, for example, glass, plastic, or the like. The voltage applied to these electrodes is controlled for each pixel to emit light of a desired color from each pixel, thereby performing a full-color display.
In the related art, it is known that a photolithography process is used to pattern the filter elements of each of the R, G, and B colors of the color filter, or to pattern the pixels of each of the R, G, and B colors of the EL device. However, the use of the photolithography process has complicates the process, and increases the cost due to the high consumption of each color material and photoresist, etc.
In order to solve the problems, a method has been proposed in which a filter material, an EL luminescent material, or the like is discharged in a dot shape to form a dot-arrangement filter element or EL luminescent layer, or the like.
Consideration will now be given to a case in which, as shown in FIG. 23(b), a plurality of dot-shaped filter elements 303 are formed by an ink jet method in each of a plurality of panel areas 302, which are set on the surface of a large-area substrate of glass, plastic, or the like, for example, a so-called motherboard 301 shown in FIG. 23(a).
In this case, during several times (twice in the case shown in FIG. 23) of main scanning with an ink jet head 306 having a nozzle row 305 including a plurality of nozzles 304 arranged in a row as shown in FIG. 23(c) for each panel area 302, as shown by arrows A1 and A2 in FIG. 23(b), a filter material, for example, ink, is selectively discharged from the plurality of nozzles to form the filter elements 303 at desired positions.
The filter elements 303 of each of the R, G, and B colors are formed in an appropriate arrangement such as a stripe, delta or mosaic arrangement. Therefore, for ink discharge from the ink jet head 306, the ink jet head 306 for discharging each of the R, G, and B colors is previously provided for each of the three colors R, G and B so that the ink jet heads 306 are successively used to form an arrangement of the three colors of R, G and B on the motherboard 301, as shown in FIG. 23(b).